ression: 'But some day, Ned, I shall go for good. I don't know
whether you've been depending on me--you and some of the others. I think
perhaps you have. If so, don't depend on me, Ned, any more! It must all
come to an end--everything must--_everything!_--except the struggle to
be a man in the world, and not a beast--to make one's heart clean and
soft, and not hard and vile. That is the _one_ thing that matters, and
lasts. Ah, never forget that, Ned! Never forget it!'

He stood still, towering over the slouching thick-set form beside him,
his pale intensity of look giving a rare dignity and beauty to the face
which owed so little of its attractiveness to comeliness of feature. He
had the makings of a true shepherd of men, and his mind as he spoke was
crossed by a hundred different currents of feeling--bitterness, pain,
and yearning unspeakable. No man could feel the wrench that lay before
him more than he.

Ned Irwin said not a word. His heavy lids were dropped over his deep-set
eye; he stood motionless, nervously fiddling with his butterfly
net--awkwardness, and, as it seemed, irresponsiveness, in his whole
attitude.

Robert gathered himself together.

'Well, good-night, my lad,' he said with a change of tone. 'Good luck to
you; be off to your tea!'

And he turned away, striding swiftly over the short burnt August grass
in the direction of the Murewell woods, which rose in a blue haze of
heat against the slumberous afternoon sky. He had not gone a hundred
yards before he heard a clattering after him. He stopped, and Ned came
up with him.

'They're heavy, them things,' said the boy, desperately blurting it out,
and pointing, with heaving chest and panting breath, to the rod and
basket. 'I am going that way, I can leave un at the rectory.'

Robert's eyes gleamed.

'They are no weight, Ned--'cause why? I've been lazy and caught no fish!
But there,'--after a moment's hesitation he slipped off the basket and
rod, and put them into the begrimed hands held out for them. 'Bring them
when you like; I don't know when I shall want them again. Thank you, and
God bless you!'

The boy was off with his booty in a second.

'Perhaps he'll like to think he did it for me, by and by,' said Robert
sadly to himself, moving on, a little moisture in the clear gray eye.

* * * * *

About three o'clock next day Robert was in Oxford. The night before he
had telegraphed to ask if Grey was at home. The